The Swords of Corium Read Online Free PDF Page A

followed the woman for a time, stumbling over large, loose stones. The air between the columns hung motionlessly. It felt cold and thick. It clung like a fog to the skin and the mind.
    The priestess stopped at last and lifted her arm, pointing. Gruum followed her gesture. There, he saw a pool of dank, still water. Beyond the pool, he saw a shape moving. He frowned… was that a table?
    He turned to ask the priestess, but she had left. He craned his neck and spotted her, wending her way back with the taper guttering in her hand. He snapped his head back and forth, eyeing the movement out over the pool of water and the retreating priestess, who now was only visible as a tiny, bobbing yellow flame. Had she left him here for a sinister purpose?
    Gruum sighed and drew his heavy saber. He knelt and rested the saber across his legs. It glimmered in the darkness, still shining with its own internal light from whatever sorcery had been infused into it when he’d lost it in Anduin’s world.
    He produced a small lamp and struggled to light it with flint and tinder. He struck the steel box again and again, but although the flint sparked against the box, the wick refused to light. He cursed softly, and flicked at it several more times.
    Gruum heard something then, something strange. He thought it was a wheel moving, rolling over stone. He looked up and saw the thing he had thought to be a table. He realized now it was a cart, not a table. Four wheels rolled and creaked as it drew nearer. He stopped trying to light his lamp, as the cart had twin lights of its own. They were lit from inside, but not by any natural flame. Green, ghastly smoke roiled within the twin globes. Worse, much worse, he saw now that the cart had no animals pulling it. Neither was there a driver. Instead, it seemed to move of its own volition.
    Gruum stopped breathing. He stared at the cart as it drew closer. Things were lying on the flat bed of it, he could see them now. Forms that were not entirely still. When the cart bumped over a stone, the shapes flopped and shifted. Feet and hands lolled off the sides. Not until the driverless, horseless cart reached the water’s edge and splashed into the still pool that separated it from him did he stand suddenly, thinking to flee.
    “Be still,” a small voice said behind him. “Make no light or movement, and it will stop seeking you.”
    Gruum froze. He knew the voice, for it was Nadja’s. Having her come so close without his knowing did not ease his state of mind, however. If anything, her nearness caused the hair on his neck to bristle even more. Being a veteran of her father’s strange habits, Gruum did manage to keep from screaming and running away blindly into the dark.
    The driverless cart had rolled ten paces into the pool before it squeaked to a halt. The brass wheels were half-submerged. There it paused, as if uncertain. Neither Gruum nor Nadja moved.
    “It cannot hear, nor see, but it can sense movement,” said Nadja quietly.
    “It cannot hear?” asked Gruum. “Then we can speak. What is this thing?”
    “They call it a gatherer . It hunts for the dead.”
    “I see no dead.”
    “But they are everywhere, silly Gruum! You are standing on them.”
    Gruum startled, but froze again before he alerted the cart. His eyes slid to his feet. It was too dark to see the ground, even with the ghostly green light of the cart’s twin lamps. He thought of the rocks he had been stumbling over as he crossed the uneven flooring.
    “The stones? The dead lie beneath the stones?”
    “Yes. The flooring here is a vast pile of cairns. This entire place is a mound of dead, covered in heavy stones. But sometimes, the dead are strong enough to push their way free. That is when the gatherer comes.”
    Gruum swallowed. “I have no desire to be mistaken by this cart for one of the escaped dead.”
    “That is wise.”
    They stood as still as they were able. The gatherer began spinning its brass wheels again at last, and